Daily Chizuk #1268

As we prepare to light the first candle tonight on Hanukkah, let us reflect on one of the messages we are supposed to be taking from the holiday. In last week’s parasha, the pasuk tells us, Yaakov Avinu was afraid when he heard Esav was marching toward him with an army. The question was asked, why would Yaakov be afraid? The Gemara tells us, בוא וראה כמה גבורתו של יעקב – come see how mighty Yaakov was – and there it describes the enormous boulder that he lifted when establishing a monument with Lavan. The Torah tells us how he single handedly pushed a boulder off of a well that would normally need many people to move. It also says Yaakov was able to transport all of his animals across Nachal Yabok. He lifted thousands of animals and passed them over a deep river. He had superhuman strength. The Midrash tells us, he had 40,000 angels with him to protect him. Even one angel was able to wipe out the entire army of Sancheriv, 185,000 soldiers. And here Yaakov had 40,000 of them. He also had children capable of wiping out entire cities. So what exactly was Yaakov afraid of?
We must always remember with everything we do, all success depends solely on Hashem. There are no guarantees in life. No matter how much money a person has, no matter how smart he is, how good looking he is or how smooth talking he is, he cannot accomplish anything without help from Hashem. If a person truly believes this, he’ll accompany every physical hishtadlut with a spiritual one, whether it is tefila or extra mitzvot, that is the real way to access siyata d’Shamaya. And when a person does get help from Hashem, even if in the natural way of things it may seem unlikely that he’ll succeed, that will not matter because if we have help from Hashem, we have everything.